


From Me to You

by SloanGreyMercyDeath



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: F/F, Love Notes, cute as hell, it's cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28804617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SloanGreyMercyDeath/pseuds/SloanGreyMercyDeath
Summary: Someone is leaving little notes
Relationships: Jennifer "JJ" Jareau/Emily Prentiss
Comments: 14
Kudos: 188





	From Me to You

The first note JJ got was right after the Hankel case. They’d finally made it back to Quantico and JJ went straight to her office, desperate for a minute alone. The case had been an especially difficult one, with Reid getting captured and tortured. JJ was exhausted by the whole ordeal, but she sat at her desk, just breathing for a moment.

The familiar, solitary space comforted her. She’d set her go-bag on the desk, remembered the candy bar she’d tucked away and unzipped the side pocket. Her fingers brushed against a piece of paper and she pulled it out, brow furrowing at the page from a small notepad. The note read  _ It wasn’t your fault. _

JJ burst into tears. She gripped the note tightly, careful not to rip it. She blamed herself for Spence getting taken, even when she knew that it wasn’t all on her shoulders. The team seemed to blame her, too. Well, except for whoever had left this note for her. Taking a deep breath, she ran her fingers over the neat scrawl, wondering whose it was. Smiling, she tucked the note into a drawer and headed home.

She got a couple more notes over the next couple months. One said  _ You look great in a ponytail  _ and another read  _ You made a lot of great points today. Sorry that they didn’t listen. _ She found one on the jet inside a case file that said  _ It’s gonna be a tough one, but you always do great. _ There was nothing else for a while and then a fifth note showed up inside her lunch bag only said  _ Really? Tunafish? _

JJ had laughed so loudly that it had turned into a coughing fit. Emily appeared at her side to see if she was ok. With a small smile, she patted JJ’s back.

“Everything ok?”

Nodding, JJ laughed and tucked the note into her pocket. It was going right to the top of the small pile that had accumulated in her desk drawer. She grinned at Emily.

“Yeah,” she assured her, patting her arm. “I just saw something funny.” Lifting her sandwich, she nodded toward the table in the small kitchen. “Join me for lunch?”

JJ and Emily ate lunch together most days. They could usually squeeze a solid thirty minutes in, but sometimes it was JJ getting take-out and bringing it to Emily at her desk, or Emily getting JJ’s lunch from the fridge and eating with her in her office. JJ liked the company and Emily was easy to get along with. If JJ wasn’t determined to keep her personal and professional life separate, she might have admitted that she had a crush on Emily.

The next note didn’t appear for a month. JJ had begun to believe that they’d stopped altogether. She kind of liked the notes. They were like silent support from a mysterious friend. She didn’t know who it could be, but she thought that it might be Penelope. Cute notes like that seemed right up her alley.

The newest note made her think it wasn’t Penelope after all. She’d slipped her hands into her coat at the end of the day and found a note that said  _ You looked really pretty today. I hope that’s ok to say.  _ She smiled at the compliment, wondering again who the mystery sender was. It was just too unsure to be Penelope, but she didn’t know who else would send them.

Each note was the same paper and had the same handwriting. JJ went to her desk and pulled out the small stack she’d accumulated. Maybe she should try and figure out who it was. What if she was disappointed by who it was? With a sigh, she paperclipped them together, put them in the drawer and left her office.

Penelope and Emily were waiting for her by the elevator, chatting happily. It had been an easy day at the office and they had the next day off, so they’d decided to go out for drinks. Her two best friends grinned at her when she approached them.

“Ready to get shit-faced?” Penelope asked her as Emily called the elevator. “We hitting Ziggy’s? O’Keefe’s? My place? Your place? Emily’s place?”

“Calm down, Garcia,” JJ laughed. “We don’t have to go hard every single time we go out. Why don’t we just get dinner?”

Emily raised an eyebrow. “We look too good to sit in some dark restaurant.”

“Well…” JJ thought about the note she’d just received and shrugged. “What the hell! Let’s go crazy!”

They ended up at Penelope’s apartment after a few hours at Ziggy’s. They’d drank more than they should have, of course, and ended up piled on Penelope’s bed, still fully clothed. Emily lay on her back in the middle, Penelope with her feet on the pillow to her right and JJ on her stomach on the left. She was laying on Emily’s hair, trapping her, but no one seemed to care.

“Oh!” JJ gasped, sitting up suddenly and startling the other women. Her head swam and she almost poked herself in the eye as she tried to clap a hand over her forehead. “I’ve been getting notes.”

Emily’s head lolled to the side to look up at her. “Oh?”

“Notes?” Penelope asked, lifting herself up onto her elbow.s “Love notes?”

“No. At least… I don’t think so.” JJ shrugged. “They haven’t been flirty. More like...supportive”

Rolling onto her side, Emily rested a hand on JJ’s thigh. “Do you like them?”

“Yeah!” JJ grinned down at her, almost poking  _ Emily’s  _ eye out as she tapped her on the nose. “The one today said I looked nice. It’s kind of cute actually.”

“You do!” Penelope said too loudly. She frowned. “Well, maybe you did. You look drunk now. Sorry, Peaches.”

The three best friends burst into a fit of laughter, falling over each other. All meaningful conversation was done for the night. They fell asleep tangled together, still dressed in their work clothes.

JJ woke up first, like always, and found herself being held in the circle of Emily’s arms. She felt warm and safe and even the faint rattle of a hangover behind her eyes didn’t do anything to diminish how wonderful it felt. She wanted to stay this close forever, but she knew that Emily would wake up soon and pull away. She also knew that there was very little chance of Emily liking her back. Cool girls like that didn’t like basic girls like JJ.

The arm over her waist tightened for a moment before disappearing completely. JJ sat up and looked behind her to see Emily wiping her eyes and stretching her legs. On Emily’s other side, Penelope still had her feet on the pillow, snoring away.

“I’m going to make breakfast,” JJ said quietly. Emily gave her a bleary smile, blowing her a quick kiss and falling back to sleep. 

After that night, the notes took a slightly different tone and there were more and more of them. One in a case file said  _ Baby blue suits you. _ So, JJ started wearing a little more baby blue.  _ I love listening to you talk. You’re so eloquent  _ was in her jacket pocket somehow. It gave JJ the confidence to speak up a little bit more. JJ wanted to find out who it was, but the longer it went on, and the more she got notes like  _ fuck the police chief. His hair is stupid and he’s a suck-up. You were right _ ! the more she wanted it to be someone she liked back. There was only one person in the office she really wanted it to be.

Emily had been with the BAU for over a year. She and JJ had grown incredibly close in that time, and she’d easily become JJ’s best friend. Penelope had Kevin, Morgan had his girls, Reid had his books, and JJ… JJ had Emily. What would she do if the notes were from someone else? What if JJ had built up all the flirting and the talks in her head?

They’d talk about everything together. Emily had talked her into good outfits and out of bad relationships. They were thick as thieves. They had sleepovers and late nights doing paperwork and private moments during cases when one of them needed to calm down. JJ was considering forgetting about the notes altogether and just...ask Emily out for drinks. Non-platonically.

The notes escalated again after they ran into Will LaMontagne in Miami. JJ had been flirting with him for a while, but when they’d met again in person, the chemistry just wasn’t there. Emily had stayed up with her all night being a supportive friend and, eventually, JJ had decided to just cut ties with Will. She wonders if that’s why the notes started getting flirtier.

It was  _ You look so hot in your vest  _ and  _ Talk policy to me  _ and  _ Thanks for wearing more blue, baby _ . JJ’s stack in her drawer was getting thicker and thicker. She wondered if it was possible to fall in love with someone through notes. It wasn’t just that, though, and she knew it.

JJ was in love with Emily. More time passed and she couldn’t lie to herself anymore. She was crazy over Emily and these small gestures only made it worse. Or better. She didn’t know if she should shut it all down or finally confess. 

Luckily, the decision was made for her. JJ stepped off the elevators and spotted Emily leaving the bullpen with her notepad in her hand. She was scribbling something down, heading for JJ’s office. JJ quickly pressed herself to the wall in the elevator room, peeking around the corner to see Emily go into her office. 

JJ moved back into the elevator lobby, heart racing at the visible confirmation that it was Emily who had been silently supporting her all this time. Emily was vocally supportive, but she could tell that JJ needed something to hold on to. In this case, literal notes to hold on to.

Emily passed by her, not noticing where she was tucked against the wall, before entering the bullpen again. Quickly, JJ hurried down the hall to her office. Knowing that there was a note waiting for her, the newest in a long line of notes that she’d received over the course of the past year, spurred her on.

She entered her office and shut the door behind herself. Dropping her purse onto the floor, she looked around her desk for where the note might be. It wasn’t in any drawer, tucked into any case file, or in the jacket she kept draped over the back of her chair. A noise caught her attention and she turned to see Emily standing in the doorway, holding up a piece of paper.

“Looking for this?”

JJ rolled her eyes, crossing the room and snatching it from her. “Yes.”

_ I love you  _

She stared at the note for far too long, reading the three words over and over again. It was the same neat, slightly slanted handwriting that all the other notes had been on and the same paper. JJ was right. It had been Emily all along.

“You can keep that,” Emily said quietly, nodding to the note. “Put it with the others.”

“I was hoping it’d be you.” JJ clutched the note to her chest. “I love you, too.”

Emily shrugged casually, as if this conversation wouldn’t change everything between them forever. “I figured, but it’s good to hear.”

JJ launched herself forward, kissing Emily with all the stored up inside her. She was swept up by Emily’s arms, held close, and it made her feel loved. It made her feel cared for the same way the small notes of affirmation and support and encouragement had. Emily was her best friend and she was also the woman she loved.


End file.
